Media Culture and Society - Course Outline

Department of Journalism and Mass Communication JMC- DSEC-603 Media, Culture and Society III Semester from August 2024 Course Advisor: Dr. Barath N Course Description The Course is intended to provide an introductory framework to the subject/discipline of Cultural Studies. The main objective is to introduce students to the key questions and debates, both historical and contemporary. It would emphasize Media as central to the analysis of different aspects of culture and societal structures and foreground the ‘power’ that it exerts on the major social institutions. This course is structured around the premise that ‘Culture as a commodity’ is produced by discourse and media practices. During the semester we would traverse around different avenues of Media, Culture and Society and the major framework is to understand culture both as a process and a product. Apart from touching upon the conventional social sciences and humanities paradigm of cultural studies, the course will analyze the relationships among the three entities. The focus will be on representation, hegemony, censorship, gender and sexuality, war and terrorism, film, television, globalization, popular culture, interrogating its complex inter-relationships with other social structures namely Religion Class, Caste, Race, Ethnicity and so on. Course Expectations Page 1 Students are expected to read the texts and actively engage in the classes. This also means that you are expected to complete assigned readings BEFORE the online lecture sessions. Participation in class proceedings and discussions are MANDATORY and would be considered for your internal assessment. Assignments are due on their assigned date unless previous arrangements have been made with the instructor in advance. Students are advised to be mindful of their class attendance as required percentage of attendance is a MUST to sit for the final exams. Course Structure Lectures by the instructor will be supplemented by PowerPoint slides, YouTube videos and films if necessary. The following will constitute the work students are required to do for internal assessment purposes.    Class Presentations: Students are required to select one of the readings listed and present in the class. The presentation must consist of a precise summary and a critical assessment of the work. The presentations will be scheduled around September and October Class Test: There will be a written test around November. Details will be informed as the semester proceeds. Final Exam: End Semester exam will include the select readings. Reading lists, materials, articles, write-ups and periodic instructions/announcements etc. pertaining to the course will be emailed to the group. Please do check with each other for announcements. *********************************************** List of Conceptual readings Culture and Communication Culture and communication have been defined and re-defined repeatedly as they are concepts that are intimately linked with what is intrinsically human. Few papers that explore this nexus will be dealt in detail in this section, highlighting their central place in society. 1. James W Carey, “A Cultural Approach to Communication” 2. Dawei Wang, “Globalization of the Media: Does It Undermine National Cultures?” 3. Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism 4. Lawrence Grossberg, Can Cultural Studies find true happiness in Communication? Page 2 Introduction to Cultural Studies The concepts of “culture” and “popular culture”; a brief history of Cultural Studies; theoretical legacies of Cultural Studies; brief introduction to Marxism, Structuralism, Poststructuralism and Feminism will be the focus of the few introductory lecture series 5. Raymond Williams, “Culture is Ordinary” 6. John Storey, “What is Popular Culture?” 7. Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies" 8. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” 9. Tejaswini Niranjana. “The Desire for Cultural Studies” 10. Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay. “Cultural Studies and Politics in India Today” List of Thematic readings -- (For Presentations and Class Discussions) Representation in/and Popular Culture 11. Kaustubh Deka, “Axone Is a Story of Racism Told From the Eyes of the Privileged” as accessed on31st August 2020 https://thewire.in/film/axone-movie-review-racismprivilege 12. Vegard Iglebaek, “Masculinities in the television series ‘Friends’ A Different Kind of Male Friendship? (Unpublished Dissertation), University of Manchester 13. Tejaswini Niranjana “Integrating Whose Nation? Tourists and Terrorists in 'Roja' ” Economic and Political Weekly, January 15, 1994. 14. Hirmer Monike “Taking Cringe Pop Seriously” Economic and Political Weekly, May 05, 2018 15. Günseli Naz Ferel, “A Discussion on Politics, Counteractions and Affections of Popular Music: A Case Study of This Is America by Childish Gambino” 16. Arjun Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol.30, no.1 (Jan 1988) Caste, Race, Gender, and Ethnicity Page 3 17. Swar Thounaojam. “A Preface to Racial Discourse in India- North-east and Mainland” Economic and Political weekly August 11, 2012. 18. Sazzad Hussain, “Analysing the Dimapur Lynching” Counter Currents, 08 March 2015 as accessed from http://www.countercurrents.org/hussain080315.htm on 10 March 2015. 19. Siddharth Varadarajan, “Caste matters in Indian Media” June 3, 2006 as accessed from http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/caste-matters-in-the-indianmedia/article3114199.ece on 10th March 2015. 20. Hugo Gorringe, D Karthikeyan “The Hidden Politics of Vegetarianism- Caste and The Hindu Canteen” Economic and Political Weekly May 17, 2014. 21. Saidiya Hartman, (2011) “Prologue: The Path of Strangers” in Lose Your Mother- A journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, Delhi: Navayana pp 3-19 22. Bose, Brinda ‘The Desiring Subject: Female Pleasures and Feminist Resistance in Deepa Mehta’s Fire’ in Bhattacharyya, Subhabrata and Bose, Brinda (ed), The Phobic and The Erotic Seagull, Calcutta, 2007 437-451 23. Janice Radway ‘Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context’ Feminist Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring, 1983), pp. 53-78. Religion in Media and Society 24. Rajagopal, A. (2001). Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Introductory chapter of the book? 25. Said, Edward (1997) Covering Islam How the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world. New York: Vintage. Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 26. Amitava Kumar, “How Perumal Murugan Was Resurrected Through Writing,” The New Yorker, December 12, 2019 27. Janice Peck, “Selling Goods and Selling God: Advertising, Televangelism and the commodity Form” Journal of communication Inquiry 17:1 (winter 1993) 28. Pachuau, J. (2019). Why Do People Convert? Understanding Conversions to Christianity in Mizoram. In N. Bhattacharya & J. Pachuau (Eds.), Landscape, Culture, and Belonging: Writing the History of Northeast India (pp. 294-313). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 29. Kunal Purohit (2023). H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars Page 4 30. Yasmin Moll. ‘The Idea of Islamic Media: The Qur’an and the Decolonization of Mass Communication’ International Journal of Middle East Studies (2020), 52, 623–642